Chuikov's 8th Guards Army
Since the beginning of time, humankind has often asked the question “why…” The great philosophers of antiquity grappled with the question, as it is central to understanding the human experience. And it begins at a young age. Toddlers often ask, “Why is the sky blue?” or “Why is the grass green?” As a person grows older, the question continues to gain complexity and causes one to reflect. Authentic leaders are self-aware and fully understand their “why”—why they strive, why they act, why they fight.
During the Great Patriotic War, soldiers understood why they fought when they witnessed first-hand the death and destruction caused by the Nazis across Europe. Western and Eastern Front armies closed in on Berlin in the final days of the war in April 1945, and Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army was there in the thick of things. In The Fall of Berlin, Vasily Ivanovich shared a moment of respite before the assault on the city. His writing is descriptive, giving the reader a sense of the calm before the storm. In this brief excerpt from his memoirs, a scene from a bombed-ravaged structure caused him to recall a sweet moment of time with his wife and younger daughter Irina. Chuikov fully understood his “why”—to defeat the evil regime bent on destroying his family and friends, his soldiers, his community, his homeland, his culture…
“In the morning I went up to my observation post. It was in a large five-storied building near the Johannisthal aerodrome. From a corner room here, where there was a jagged hole in the wall, one got a view of the southern and southeastern parts of Berlin. Roofs, roofs without end, with here and there is a break between them—the work of landmines. In the distance factory chimneys and church spires stood out. The parks and squares, in which the young leaves were already out, seemed like little outbreaks of green flame. Mist lay along the streets, mingled with the dust raised from the previous night’s artillery fire. In places, the mist was overlaid by fat trails of black smoke, like mourning streamers. And somewhere in the center of the city, ragged yellow plumes rose skywards as bombs exploded: the heavy bombers had already started their preliminary “working-over” of the targets for the forthcoming attack.
Suddenly, the earth shuddered and rocked under my feet: thousands of guns announced the beginning of the storming operation.
I glanced around. To my right there was the white patch of a bath, and in the bath lay a broken piece of brick. I felt I had to throw it out. Maybe because something very near and dear had come to mind at the sight of it—my younger daughter, little Irina, who was very fond of splashing about in her bath. When the war began and the front came close to Moscow, my wife and both our daughters were evacuated to Kuibyshev (now known as Samara, on the Volga). There they lived in someone’s flat, which had no bath. Irina used to get bathed in a wooden tub. Instead of soap, my wife used mustard power…. There’s a war on!
A pricking, maddening itch started up on my arm, from fingers to elbows. My skin burned as though my arms had been plunged into hot pitch, or into an ants’ nest. I threw the brick away violently, but the itching did not stop. I first got eczema at the time of the fighting on the approaches to the Volga, and from then on it would flare up periodically. Another little present from the war which was brought to birth by this same Fascist Beast….” (180).
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